


with a rifle or a gun

by addandsubtract



Series: bear-traps and also road rage [2]
Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Anger, Full Of Terrible Feelings, Gen, Humor, Road Rage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-20
Updated: 2010-10-20
Packaged: 2017-10-26 05:45:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,280
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/279390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/addandsubtract/pseuds/addandsubtract
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>or! five times arthur responded with far too much violence.</p>
            </blockquote>





	with a rifle or a gun

**Author's Note:**

> this is sort of a companion piece to bear-trap!eames - if that was a universe, this might be in it also. with that in mind, SIMILAR RIDICULOUSNESS.

i.

There are many things that Arthur knows about himself with certainty – he’s a damn good shot, he’s allergic to artificial grape flavoring, he can’t stand tiny, rat-shaped dogs – but what probably gives him the most trouble is how terrible an actor he is. And he knows this.

The only role he can play with any kind of consistency is the role of the overly aggressive captor, or, possibly, the maniac driver.

“You just have to feel the emotion of it, love,” Eames says, wiping at his eyes. They’re sitting across the table from each other, and Arthur’s just had to suffer through Eames’ startlingly real tears for seven minutes while Eames charmed them another two free pints of beer. “If you don’t really believe it, how can you expect anyone else to?”

“If you tell me to feel anything other than anger and a general sense of frustration and irritation than I’m going to reach over and pull your spleen out through your nose,” Arthur says, clenching his fists on his thighs. He hates crying. It makes him tense.

“Now, Arthur, I’m a perfectly capable lady,” Eames says, and sighs. “I’m relatively certain that would be too difficult to be at all satisfying.”

“Maybe,” Arthur says, “but you’d still be without a spleen.”

Eames laughs, and finishes his pint without answering. He stands, stretching his arms over his head and cracking his neck. It looks slightly painful, but Arthur is still looking.

“This has been fun,” Eames says, “but some of us have work in the morning.” He waves with four waggling fingers and slinks off with the practiced grace of his preferred sort of leggy blonde. It should be difficult to do in his rather solid body, but he still manages it. Arthur hates him for a minute, and then lets it subside.

It really would be far too difficult to actually remove Eames’ spleen. He’ll have to start somewhere else.

 

ii.

The job in London is supposed to take less than week, but it drags on for more than twice that. Cobb says that they have to do more legwork, which will inevitably involve Arthur getting rained on more than he already has. If Arthur doesn’t get out of his periphery, he’s going to do something drastic, like cut out Cobb’s tongue and wiggle it in front of his shocked face.

It’s cold in London, and rainy, and Arthur is tired of it.

Of course, he’s not expecting his escape from the warehouse to involve meeting Eames’ family. If he’d known, he’d have taken his chances with Cobb.

“I’m never letting you supply the escape route ever again,” Arthur says, deadpan. He’s ended up, somehow, in a ballroom, and he can only be grateful that he’s already dressed the part. Eames’ extended family do share some obvious features with Eames – the lips, for one; the overly flippant voice, for another – and the general volume level is starting to give Arthur a headache.

This is when someone grabs his ass, a distinct fondle, and then _pinches_. Arthur jumps, and squawks, and spins around in a generally graceless manner. One of Eames’ extended cousins, once or twice removed, possibly, which Arthur does not give a fuck about at this point, is smirking and waggling his eyebrows. The mannerism is disturbingly similar to the one Eames always pulls when he’s pretending that he’s bluffing as poker.

“If you so much as breathe in my general direction ever again I promise you that I will shoot off each and everyone one of your fingers and toes, one at a time, until you’re a blubbering, weeping mess. And trust me, I’m armed.” Arthur can feel his nostrils flare in indignation, and he’s pretty sure his cheeks are pink. The cousin gives him the wide, innocent eyes of _my god but you are a loony_ , and shuffles off to the drink table.

Eames is laughing silently somewhere behind Arthur; Arthur can feel it in the air. When he turns, sure enough, there is Eames, clutching at his stomach, bent over double.

“I see where you get it from,” Arthur says. He grabs Eames’ wrist and drags him toward the door. “We’re leaving. I need a stiff drink and an hour of shooting at inanimate objects.”

 

iii.

Driving isn’t Arthur’s forte. This is one of those things that he’s just had to learn to accept, like Dom’s startling ability to speak using only his eyebrows for communication, or how Ariadne is apparently physically incapable of leaving well enough alone in almost any situation.

So, Arthur isn’t very good at driving. He knows this, and he accepts it. He’s still a better driver than Eames.

“We’ve had this discussion,” Arthur says, whizzing by on the shoulder, outside wheels brushing against nearly dead highway grass. “And the last time you forgot to drive on the correct side of the road, you almost destroyed several acres of farmland, and came within half of foot of killing a cow.”

“Arthur, darling, if you wouldn’t mind staying on the pavement,” Eames says, left hand white-knuckled on the armrest.

“I am on the pavement.” Arthur swerves back into the lane, and ignores Eames’ fearful hiss. He doesn’t hit anything, though there are a few assholes behind him beeping their horns.

“Well done,” Eames says. Arthur can’t decide if he’s being sarcastic or not, but he’s not paying that much attention to Eames, so it doesn’t really matter.

“If you don’t stop braking, I will ram this car into you,” Arthur snarls, very seriously, at the Toyota Corolla in front of him. There are two pig-tailed children in the backseat, and Arthur almost pities them, because if their parents lived in a different city, maybe they’d be looking forward to years to come, instead of being crushed underneath the hood of Arthur’s obscenely huge Escalade.

Arthur doesn’t bother to list a preference with rental cars.

“They can’t hear you, Arthur,” Eames says, soothing. They were supposed to be at the warehouse half an hour ago, but LA drivers can’t tell the difference between actual rush hour and traffic just because no one knows how to drive faster than the speed limit.

Arthur really, really hates to be late.

“They still deserve to be shot.” Arthur’s hands are starting to ache from clutching at the steering wheel, but he’s still going 48 miles an hour, just like everyone else across all three lanes.

“I’m sure they do,” Eames says. “Please exit the highway, Arthur.”

“Fine.” Still, Arthur can’t help rolling down his window as he slides into the exit only lane and yelling, “I hope your children are sterile and your genetic material is lost forever!” out into the wind.

 

iv.

Cabott and Sons is probably the most moronic company that Arthur has had the unfortunate luck to work for in the past seven years. Matthew Cabott, the eldest of the five Cabott children, has an office overlooking the Hudson, even though the company is too small to really require it. He’s a self-important prick, and Arthur doesn’t like him.

“I’m going to shoot him,” he says, washing his hands in the bathroom sink with murderous precision. Matthew has a private bathroom connected to his office, but he’s such a snob that he won’t let anyone use it. Which is fine with Arthur because at least this way he’s not tempted to destroy everything in it. “If you’re lucky, it won’t be until after the job is over.”

“I’m sorry he said you look like a greaser from a bad 80s movie,” Eames says, which, really, not helping. Arthur dries his hands on a huge, wasteful handful of paper towels, and then wads them up and throws them in the trashcan. Anything to cost the company slightly more.

Arthur really hates idiots.

“That’s not why he deserves to die,” Arthur says through clenched teeth. It certainly doesn’t help his case, though.

“No, obviously, he deserves to die because he called Cobb a crackpot, which mean he’s a dunderhead. Though, personally, my favorite of his lovely epithets was his description of Ariadne as a ‘cat-eyed she-minx,’ which I’m relatively certain is not what he’d intended to say.” Eames is leaning against the tiled wall, watching Arthur pace. He’s both making sure that Arthur doesn’t do anything idiotic, which he wouldn’t, and that Arthur is all right, which he is. Not that Arthur doesn’t appreciate both gestures to some degree.

“He also implied that you might be some sort of freakish - _invert_ , to use an antiquated term.” Arthur stops pacing, but only so that he can keep himself from punching the door to the closest bathroom stall.

“That’s not entirely untrue, however,” Eames says with a shrug. His arms are crossed over his chest, so it looks vaguely uncomfortable.

“It’s no excuse for rudeness,” Arthur says. He takes a deep breath. “And you know he can’t expect us to do the job within the fifteen minute window he’s giving us. We can stretch the time out as long as we want; it’s simply not enough.”

“I know,” Eames says.

“If he says ‘I thought you were professionals’ one more time I refuse to be responsible for the number of pieces he ends up in.”

“I know,” Eames says again.

Arthur scowls, and tugs his waistcoat back into place. “Just so we’re clear.”

 

v.

“Would you hold still?” Eames is frustrated, Arthur can tell, but he doesn’t really give a shit.

“I’m completely fine.” It’s possible that he’s slurring slightly. Eames isn’t very good at sewing, but the stitches are at least close to the same size and width apart. Arthur can feel every pull of the thread, every pinch and tug of the needle underneath his skin. It hurts, but not as much as it would have if Eames hadn’t made him drink half of the handle of bourbon he keeps in his suitcase. “’S just a scratch, really. Nothing to worry about.”

“Oh, you mean this gash? The one you got from shoving your hand through a window?”

“Wrapped my shirt around my hand, didn’t I?” Arthur asks. He’s bleeding onto the kitchen table in steady drips, soaking into the paper towels spread underneath his arm.

“Doesn’t matter when there’s nothing to protect your forearm,” Eames says.

“Fine,” Arthur says. “But once you’re done stitching me up, I’m going to find Robertson and I’m going to drive tiny pieces of glass underneath his fingernails until he tells me how much they paid him to give us up.” Arthur is more violent when uninhibited. This applies to alcohol, and to sex. Plus, he doesn’t really like being shot at very much. He also doesn’t like being forced to break and enter.

“You do that,” Eames says, and ties the thread in a knot. They’d lost Cobb and Yusuf on the fire escape outside the warehouse, but the goons had gone after Arthur and Eames, and they’d seemed perfectly fine when they checked in fifteen minutes ago. Maybe a little bored. Ariadne had been working from her hotel room, and so she’d missed the whole betrayal and subsequent chase.

“I will,” he says. “And once he tells me, which he will, I’ll shoot him in the kneecap. Both of them, possibly.”

“Arthur, you’re not leaving this room until you’ve slept and had a sandwich.”

“You haven’t gone grocery shopping in well over a week,” Arthur says. The room is swimming; he’s drunker than he thought. “No one shoots at my team, Eames.”

“You’re the only one bleeding on my kitchen table, Arthur.” Eames is dabbing at the wound with peroxide, and then wrapping it in gauze. They’re all relatively well prepared for flesh wounds – part of the job.

His hands are gentle, even though he’s smiling the smile that says _I don’t care what you say_. Arthur’s pretty sure that’s not going to stop him.

“I have peanut butter,” Eames adds, “and stale bread, and a toaster. Good enough for a sod like you.”

“I’m giving you six hours,” Arthur says. “And then I’m going after Robertson.”

“Let’s make sure you don’t empty the entire contents of your stomach onto the floor of my bathroom, yeah?”

“Six hours,” Arthur warns. He’s nothing if not stubborn. No one fucks with what’s his.

“If you say so.” Eames smile is saying, _you’ll be soundly asleep by then_. Arthur is going to prove him wrong.

 

(and because I couldn’t help myself:

 

vi.

“So, mate, if you were, say, stranded in Alexandria and banned from the airport, what would you do? You know, hypothetically.” Eames voice is crackling on the other end of the telephone, but not so badly that Arthur can’t make out what he’s saying. Arthur wasn’t sleeping, precisely, but he was well on his way in that direction.

“Use lethal force,” he says, before he can think about it.

“You’re suggesting that I shoot my way onto an airplane? That sounds idiotic.”

“Private plane,” Arthur says, and sighs. He scrubs a hand through his hair. He can’t believe that he’s telling Eames this. “Shoot your way onto a private plane.”

“You really are entirely mental, aren’t you?” Eames sounds impressed.

“I promise you, it can be done.” Arthur is going to shut up, now.

“Wow, I’m definitely asking you about _that_ , later. Still, I really must be going.” Arthur hears what he thinks sound like gunshots in the background. “Ta, Arthur!”

“Eames –” Arthur starts, and then hears the click of the call ending. Why does he even bother anymore? “You’re an idiot, call Saito.”

He throws his phone on the bed, and flops back down, curling a hand underneath his pillow. He’s going back to sleep.)


End file.
